Where He Came From
by joanhello
Summary: After Megamind becomes Overlord, the inmates of the Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted wonder: will he remember them? One-shot, rated T because prisoners cuss a lot.


"Metrocity is mine!"

When those words were broadcast to the city, they were mostly met with silence or cries of dismay. In one place, however, the response was different. On small screens in cells all over Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted, many of them originally sent as gifts from the blue villain himself during one of his "at large" periods, prisoners had watched, as the guards and the Warden had watched, every moment of the latest clash between Megamind and his superpowered nemesis. In response to those words, a cheer rang out from every incarcerated throat. Even the prisoners who had personal issues with Megamind had a sense that one of their own had triumphed, and so it was a moment for cheering.

In the wake of that cheer, a murmur of speculation started. Now that he'd won, what would he do? Would he remember where he came from? Would he... they hardly dared hope, but since the city was his, and the prison was part of the city, that meant he would have the power to free them. Would he? And how long would he take about it? A week? A few days?

As it turned out, it was two hours.

The first sign of his arrival was when the P.A. system announced lockdown. It was a hopeful sign. If the staff was worried about it, then it must be happening, right? Fifteen minutes later, the first brainbot appeared in a window, its red camera lens eye filming everything, and the men whose cells faced the road could hear the Invisible Car. Within another minute, there were brainbots at every window and Megamind's voice was heard on loudspeakers that reached to every corner of the building.

"This is the Evil Overlord. Open up!... Oh, come on, Warden... Look. If I use the ray gun on the door, or bring up the explosives and blow it open, somebody might get hurt... That's better. I knew you'd see reason." Then he was inside, not in the orange prison uniform, but in his supervillain getup with the black leather and the spikes and the blue lightning bolt going up the front. Most of those inside had not seen it in person before, or had only seen the ragged remnants left after a battle. A roar went up from the cells along the main hallway. He was moved, perhaps in imitation of his defeated enemy's action flying above the crowd at the museum opening earlier that day, to spread a hand and sprint down the hall, slapping palms held out between the bars on his right. He struck the door of his old cell feet first and used it as a starting block to come back the other way, giving five to the hands stretched out from the other side of the long central corridor. At the end of that joyous gallop, he drew his ray gun with one hand while taking the newest guard by an elbow with the other.

"It's Chuck, right? Chuck, you're going to use that electronic key on your belt to unlock for me." He drew the man over to the last cell he had passed. The cells on this corridor were for prisoners who, in the opinion of the staff, needed particularly close watching; there was only one per cell. "Ramon," Megamind called to the man inside. "Go out front and see if Minion needs help unloading the goodies." As Chuck unlocked each cell, the newly released man ran for the open front door. Outside, next to the road, Minion was unloading cardboard boxes from the Invisible Car, which was currently in visible mode, the spiked crests and fins gleaming in the late afternoon sun. In the boxes were new black sweat pants, new black hoodies, boxes of cigars and hip flasks of whiskey and rum, all freshly looted from downtown stores. The men were encouraged to help themselves. The roadside gradually filled up with men changing clothes, smoking, swigging, laughing, exchanging friendly insults and backslaps with Minion, goggling at the brainbots, checking out the car, making calls from the phone in the car, and generally celebrating their new freedom. Once all the boxes were out, Minion got back in the driver's seat and amused them all for a little while by turning the stealth mode on and off. He also dispatched the first car thief out the door to bring the prison bus around to the front gate, then evicted the man and sat down at the wheel of the bus himself.

Meanwhile, Megamind continued to personally supervise the opening of each cell. The reason became obvious when, at a two-man cell on one of the side corridors, the blue villain let go of Chuck and aimed both his ray gun and a hard stare at one of the men inside.

"No, you don't, Shransky. What, you didn't think I'd remember that little incident? You thought, if you had your posse around you, I couldn't get back at you? Well, they're leaving now. And you're staying." Shransky tried to bolt after his departing cellmate, but a quicker-than-human black-gloved hand shot in through the bars and held him. "Lock him in, Chuck," the blue alien ordered. So it went through the prison. Most of the convicts were freed, but a few were left inside. Some of the latter were known to have crossed Megamind during one of his periods of incarceration, some were accused by Megamind of looking at him wrong in the shower and others he simply declared that he didn't like.

As he got into the higher floors, where the longterm inmates were held, he greeted an occasional grey-haired convict as "Uncle" with a great enthusiasm of backslapping, fist-bumping and mutual flattery. These he instructed "Don't get on the bus with the others. You're coming in the Invisible Car."

The bus filled up. Minion drove it into downtown and returned with it empty except for more cardboard boxes. Twenty minutes later he did it again. He had done it several times, and the crowd out front had thinned to a couple of dozen, when Megamind, following the last of the inmates walking out, ran up to the cluster of worried guards around the Warden.

"Stan and Arturo, come with me." He led them into the prison infirmary, where the only patient lay in the first bed. "Uncle Lefty!" he called out. Eugene "Lefty" Dusenberg smiled broadly when he saw the little alien, showing the gap where he'd lost a tooth decades before.

"Li'l Blue," he croaked as Megamind ran to him and took him by the shoulders. "Dis is da proudest fuckin' day o' my fuckin' life. It's okay dat I die in here, seein' what you did."

"You are NOT going to die in here," replied the villain. "Arturo, you push the bed. Stan, you carry the i.v." Megamind braced the doors open and Dusenberg's bed rolled out of the infirmary and down the corridor. The doctor ran out behind him.

"You mustn't do this," argued the doctor. "His organs are shutting down. He may only have a few hours to live."

"Then it's all the more important for him to live them as a free man," replied the Evil Overlord. "If you want, you can gather up your medicines and get on the bus with him, but he's going. It's up to you." Then he caught up with the moving bed and walked alongside it with one hand on Lefty's shoulder.

Another rousing cheer greeted them as they rolled out the front door. Another of the "Uncles" lifted Lefty's head and pressed a flask to his lips. Megamind pushed through the crowd, opened the rear door of the bus and ordered the brainbots to remove the last three rows of seats. Minion approached Lefty's bed.

"Do you remember me, Uncle Lefty?"

"Fishy! Hell, yeah. I remember when you used ta roll around in dat little bowl, and now lookit ya. Scariest son of a bitch inna place. Bet our new Evil Overlord couldn'a done it wit'out ya."

"But I know we couldn't have done it without you, Uncle Lefty. You were the best."

"Heh heh. Well, I'm just glad you two got around ta doin' it while I was still around ta see it." The doctor bustled up, carrying a huge bag, and began to check vital signs. Megamind returned to his side. A brainbot handed him a microphone.

"My fellow gifted criminals," he began, his voice booming out from the speakers held by other brainbots. "The entire back of the bus is being cleared out so that Uncle Lefty can ride in it. I want all of you, those who haven't let their muscles get soft in this wonderful luxury resort, to lift him up, bed and all, and get him into it." As the Evil Overlord commanded, so it was done, with so many men crowding around to lift up the bed that there wasn't room for them all. A diminutive cat burglar took the i.v. from Stan, holding it aloft like a flag in a parade. Three more men got up inside the bus to guide the bed in, and Uncle Lefty was settled into the back. The doctor scrambled in the front door and most of the men followed him, with Minion bringing up the rear. The rest, including Megamind, got into the car and they all rolled away, going slow so as to give Lefty a gentle ride, followed by a flotilla of brainbots.

The Warden and the guards gazed after them, across the litter of empty boxes, discarded bus seats, broken flasks and great heaps of orange jumpsuits.

"I guess this means we still have jobs," the Warden said. "Jack, get the spare keys from my office. Take the doctor's car, follow them, and bring back the bus if you can. The rest of you, clear up all that stuff from in front."


End file.
